May is Asian Heritage Month in North America, which makes it a good time to talk about the bamboo ceiling.

You cannot turn left and turn right at the same time. Eastern and Western value systems are optimized for different paths to outcomes. One is optimized for harmony. The other is optimized for constructive tension.

Neither is right or wrong. But they can be incompatible. The bamboo ceiling can be the visible symptom of that incompatibility. But I don’t think it is always the root cause.

The deeper issue is often discomfort avoidance. And that is not uniquely Asian. Discomfort avoidance is human nature. It is just more pronounced when you are navigating incompatible systems.

I was born and raised in the East and have spent my entire adulthood in the West. The breakthrough came when I became more comfortable with discomfort. It unleashed the full potential of what I could do. I started doing things I never thought I could do as a young adult.

That is when my cultural bilingualism became an unfair advantage rather than a limitation.

Disagreement became contribution. “No” became something to explore. Speaking up became leadership. Growth, leadership, and influence live on the other side of discomfort.

I wrote more on this in my latest Substack post here.